Christmas Carol'd
by Lucillia
Summary: Someone decides to give Sasuke a second chance. On the night after the Bell Test, Sasuke is visited by the Ghosts of Uchiha Past, Uchiha Present, and Uchiha Future.
1. A Visit from Marley er, Shisui

Sasuke figured that Hatake Kakashi had planned to tie Uzumaki to the post in the first place. It perfectly explained why there were cherry tomatoes in the bento box that didn't have the vaguely girlish design, as the man undoubtedly had his full psychological profile, and cherry tomatoes weren't standard bento fare. While he was willing to share his lunch with the blond loudmouthed idiot so he didn't slow them down during their second chance at the test after lunch, there was no way he would let him get at the last of the tasty little tomatoes he had been chowing down on like they were going out of fashion.

Holding the box towards Uzumaki with one hand, he snagged one of the last of the tomatoes with the other. He'd just popped the tasty treat into his mouth when his new sensei appeared out of nowhere startling him, and causing him to inhale the tomato which promptly became lodged in his throat. He was so intent on trying to hock up the tomato that he barely noticed when the man informed him that the team had passed, and didn't even notice when the man had started quoting someone and talking about something because the damn tomato was still lodged in his throat.

After choking for more than a minute without being aided because his teammates had been too preoccupied with their new sensei's lecture to notice his predicament, he fell to the ground with a thump feeling dizzy due to lack of oxygen. He vaguely heard Sakura yell "Sensei, Sasuke's turning blue!" as his world went black. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a dark cave. Sitting next to him was a vaguely familiar person tied up in ninja wire and explosive tags who looked like a drowned rat, and who on closer inspection seemed to be missing both his eyes and an arm. Somewhat alarmed by this, he decided that it would be prudent to back away at that point.

"Hiya shrimp, I guess you're finally awake. I was sent to give you a message." the man who looked to be in his late teens said.

"Who are you?" he asked wondering how he'd been kidnapped by this weirdo without anyone fighting tooth and nail to get the "last Uchiha" back.

"Don't you remember your old cousin Shisui?" the man asked, looking somewhat put out, which was rather disturbing because of the missing eyes.

Shisui? But he's...Come to think of it, that guy did indeed look dead. It couldn't be Shisui however. He vaguely remembered the funeral since it was like a week before the mass funeral for his entire clan and in that recollection, Shisui had been pretty much intact.

"What happened to your eye and your arm? And, why are you covered in ninja wire and explosive tags?" he asked as one of the explosive tags went off with a bang that was deafening in the close confines of the cave and Shisui groaned in pain before he put his flaming hair out.

"The prick Danzo stole my eye before I had Itachi kill me to keep others from being tempted to take the other one considering how dangerous it was, and stole the arm off my corpse. As for the ninja wire and tags, that's sorta why I'm here. They're my punishment for not stopping everything like I should have done long before I finally worked up the nerve to try. I heard that the strand that's being prepared for you is at least twice as long, and has five times as many explosive tags. You'll also be followed by Eternally Violating Kunai. Apparently, by the time you turn eighteen you become an even bigger asshole than Madara, and that's saying something." Shisui replied sadly.

"Eternally Violating Kunai?" he asked, somewhat stupidly in his opinion, considering the purpose was in the name.

"Let's just say they go in the out hole." Shisui said. "Fortunately, you're one lucky bastard and someone decided to reorder time to give you a second chance. You're going to be visited by three spirits tonight. You'd better listen to what they tell you because if you don't, the afterlife is going to be rather painful for you."

Shisui suddenly started to fade away as he was trying to figure out what the hell kind of dream he was having because things like this didn't happen in life, and if his dead relatives would start appearing before him, it would be to berate him for not having avenged the clan yet.

"Oh, and you'd better open your eyes, your new teammates are really starting to get worried. By the way, please tell Naruto I said hi, and sorry I couldn't get him that pack of water balloons I promised him." Shisui said smiling sadly as he vanished altogether.

He blinked at this last request because it was so unusual, and when his eyes opened, he was no longer in the cave. Instead of being trapped in darkness, he was lying next to the post to which Uzumaki was tied, and his new sensei and the pink haired annoyance were standing over him.

"I just had the strangest dream." he muttered before turning to look at the class idiot since it was a damn sight less painful than being fawned over by one of the ever present pack of fangirls.

Remembering the Uzumaki's well known fear of the paranormal, he smirked.

"Shishui said hi, and that he was sorry that he couldn't get you those water balloons." he said.

The look on the idiot's face before he turned white and fainted had been absolutely priceless, making the entire incident completely worth it despite the potential humiliation.

"Well, that explains why he didn't start pranking the Military Police until after the Massacre. I'd say "Congratulations on your first near-death experience Sasuke" if the cause weren't so lame." Kakashi said as he poked Naruto with his foot. "Well, I guess that's it for the day. Meet at that red bridge over that way tomorrow at 7 am."

**Edited 12-25-12**


	2. The First Spirit

After being dismissed for the day, he walked back to his home in the empty Uchiha compound brushing off the pink haired pest the entire way. Once he was home, he continued with his usual afternoon routine. After training until he was about ready to drop, preparing a simple dinner, and studying a manual on Fire jutsu, he went to bed.

Instead of sleeping the whole night through and waking up with the sun like he usually did, he was woken up at one forty-five in the morning by the feeling that there was someone else in the room. He didn't have to search very hard in order to confirm his suspicions, as the intruder who had woken him was standing right next to his bed.

"Sorry I'm late, I got lost on the way over here after I changed directions because I almost tripped over a black cat. Oops, sorry, you don't know me do you? Hi, my name's Obito, and I'm only about half dead really considering the fact that half my body and half my soul are still running around somewhere but, that's a long story that I don't have time to go into... I'll be your first visitor this evening." said a dark haired boy that was about his age, maybe a year or two older at the most. The most notable feature the boy had besides the orange goggles was the fact that he only had one eye.

"What happened to your eye?" he asked the boy whose smile was disturbingly similar to the Uzumaki's.

"Well, I was about to die and wasn't going to be needing it anymore so, since Kakashi needed a new eye I gave it to him as a Jounin present. Thank the gods he isn't nearly as perverted as Jiraiya-sama since I have to watch everything he sees with the damn thing." the boy whose name was Obito said false-cheerfully.

Suddenly, and without any prior warning, the world around them shifted and he found himself watching as the boy before him gave his life to rescue one of his teammates, a teammate who bore a strong resemblance to his new Jounin instructor. There was something after the point at which the Yondaime swooped in and rescued the survivors where the other boy's body seemed to phase through the rocks that had crushed him but, the world started swirling away before he could see what happened.

"Poor Itachi. He never got over my and his uncle Kinmaru's deaths." Obito said as the world shifted again, and they were suddenly at a funeral. Despite the fact that the place was packed with relatives he hadn't seen in years including his father, his eyes were only for his mother who stood stoically like the rest of the clan while she held a sobbing three year old.

"What does That Man have to do with me not being tied up in ninja wire and explosive tags while being rectally violated by a kunai for all eternity?" he asked, getting to the point of why his kinsman was there considering the dream he'd had earlier that day, not too happy to be seeing the one who had killed his family.

"Well, I'm supposed to show you why you shouldn't be an arrogant ass, shouldn't betray your teammates and your village, shouldn't join with the bastard who turned the Nine-Tailed Fox loose on Konoha amongst other things, and aren't supposed to kill the Peacebringer before he could fulfill the Toads' prophesy." Obito said.

"Hn." he said, falling back to old habits. He'd spoken more today than he had for a very long time already, and this situation was so far outside his realm of experience that he didn't even know how to begin to deal with it.

"Well, we should just get on with this." Obito said shrugging.

"If that asshat Madara's to be believed, it all started in the days of the Sage of the Six Paths. The man had two sons, one who had been born with his dojutsu and one who had born without. The eldest son - the one who had been born with the dojutsu - had expected to inherit everything despite the fact that he was an arrogant asshole who had made the waning days of his father's life a living hell..." Obito said as the funeral at which neither of them had been noticed had vanished and was replaced by the type of room you'd see in ancient buildings. In the middle of the room, two middle aged men were kneeling next to a futon upon which an elderly man lay dying.

"...And so I leave everything to you my son." the elderly man said placing his hand in that of the slightly younger looking man who looked to be on the verge of tears. The man who sat next to him looked absolutely pissed as he did this.

"What's this have to do with anything?" he asked as he watched the elder glare daggers at the younger.

"Not much really. That nutjob Madara who Stockholmed my living half said that it was the start of the fighting between the Senju and the Uchiha, who didn't exist yet if I might add. Anyways, I just wanted to see that guy get his for putting chili powder on his father's toilet paper again." Obito said with another of the Uzumaki's grins. "Well, since we're almost out of time maybe I should just fast forward to some more recent history."

Suddenly, they were in a forest watching two Uchiha - one of whom bore an eerie resemblance to him - murder a pair of their clanmates.

"And that's how that thrice damned Mangekyo Sharingan got started. Why Madara and his brother were nuts enough to actually kill their cousins during what was supposed to be a friendly spar, I don't know." Obito said. "Fast forward a few years, and we get to something that relates to you."

He had no Idea what Uchiha Madara storming off after his clan overruled him regarding the founding of Konoha, getting into a fight with the First Hokage, and surviving where he was supposed to have died had to do with anything, and he asked as much.

"Well, this all sets the groundwork for the whole Massacre thing that comes later. I honestly don't know why Madara wanted to be Hokage though, since that job's only for suckers." Obito said.

"Suckers?" he asked, wondering how a spot given to only the strongest of shinobi could be less than a reward.

"Suckers." Obito repeated, smirking mischievously.

**Edited 12-25-12**


	3. A Job for Suckers

Obito smiled and the world suddenly shifted again revealing an all too familiar office which looked brand-new at the moment rather than stately and old like it usually did. The Shodai Hokage sat groaning behind a desk covered in what had to be at least twice as much paperwork as the head of the Military Police had to deal with on a bad day. As the Senju reached for one of the forms in front of him with an air of doom about him, a secretary rushed in setting a stack of documents on the nearest pile.

"Hokage-sama, your brother is here." the woman said as she laid the documents on the overcrowded desk.

"Can you wait five minutes before sending him in?" the Hokage asked, setting the document he'd grabbed when she'd arrived aside.

"Yes Hokage-sama." the secretary replied before turning to leave.

As the secretary departed, the First Hokage pulled what looked like a storage scroll from his desk which he activated before carefully shoving the papers that covered said desk into the seal. He had barely refurled the scroll and grabbed a novel which he flipped to a random page from the same drawer from which he'd fetched the scroll before Senju Tobirama entered the room.

"So, you little pest, how's the Genin team working out?" the First Hokage asked casually as his brother stalked into the room.

As the two men began to converse, the scene shifted once more.

"I can't believe I let my brother talk me into this!" the Nidaime said as he tried to rub away a tension headache. There were several stacks of paper surrounding the man. The piles were, if anything, higher than they had been on his brother's desk. As the Senju lamented his fate, a shinobi on secretary duty entered carrying a cup of coffee and a morning paper. Looking out the window, he saw that it was pretty early in the morning rather than early-afternoon as it had been when the Nidaime's brother had been sitting at the desk.

"Your students are here." the man said as he handed the paper and the coffee over to the Second Hokage.

"Give me a few minutes before you send them in." the Second Hokage said.

As soon as the other man turned to leave, the Hokage pulled a storage scroll from the desk and started haphazardly throwing papers into it, smiling wickedly as he did so. Once the papers were put away, he unfolded the paper the secretary had brought him and started pretending to casually read it as he drank his coffee when the students in question - the Third Hokage and two of the Council members - entered.

As the three greeted their sensei, the scene shifted again

The Sandaime sighed as he read one of the numerous documents scattered on his desk. As he grabbed a brush in order to sign it, a member of the Shinobi secretary pool entered.

"Orochimaru is here to see you." the Kunoichi said.

"Give me a few seconds before you send him in." the Third Hokage said as he set the signed document aside.

"Yes Hokage-sama." the woman said as she turned to leave.

Not having enough time to fiddle with a storage scroll, the Hokage swept most of the papers that littered the top of the desk under the desk almost faster than the eye could see, leaving only one or two reports on the desk. As soon as the papers were dealt with, he grabbed the report nearest to him and started pretending to read it.

Moments after the Third Hokage had hidden the papers that had covered his desk, Orochimaru entered the room followed by a blond ANBU who couldn't have been older than sixteen.

As the traitor started speaking to his former teacher, the scene shifted again.

The Yondaime slammed his head against the desk in front of him repeatedly.

"Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?" the Fourth Hokage asked with each thump as a much younger Teuchi strode into the office carrying a takeout box from his ramen stand.

"Kakashi's outside chatting up your pretty new redheaded secretary. From the looks of it, he's got a very serious crush on her." Teuchi said smirking slightly as he sat a bowl down in front of the Hokage amidst the piles of paperwork that virtually covered his desk.

"Really?" the Hokage said looking absolutely murderous, moving to get up and tipping the bowl over in the process.

In a move that was too fast to see, the Yondaime grabbed the bowl before it could ruin the paperwork. After setting the bowl down on a stack of forms, he inspected the paperwork to make sure none of it was damaged. As he looked over the papers, his murderous look turned into an evil one as an idea suddenly came to him.

"Tell Kakashi to come in here in two minutes, I need to finish a report." the Hokage said.

"Sure thing Minato." Teuchi said.

The instant the owner of Ichiraku's vanished, the Hokage grabbed a blank scroll that he turned into a storage scroll in under ten seconds. The instant the seal was complete, the Hokage quickly cast a drying jutsu on the scroll and stuffed the papers into it. He had the scroll put away and was started on lunch when a teenage Hatake Kakashi entered the office.

"Ah Kakashi. Sit. Sit. I just heard that you came by and didn't bother to see me. Naturally I was hurt at this." the Hokage said.

"Sorry Sensei. I was going to see you, but I got distracted by Uzumaki-ch-san..." Hatake said, his excuse trailing off.

The Hokage's eyes started glinting dangerously at the mention of his secretary.

"I hear that you haven't yet chosen your career path." the Hokage said. "You'll need to decide on one since..."

"I was considering joining Toriyama's tracking team." Hatake said.

"Have you ever considered becoming Hokage? Joining the ANBU would help you on that path." the Hokage said with a positively evil look in his eyes.

As the Hokage and the young Hatake discussed career options, the scene shifted again.

The desk was covered in paperwork. There were also stacks of paperwork as tall as the desk surrounding it.

"Minato, if I'd known you'd leave this much paperwork behind, I'd have sacrificed myself instead." the Third Hokage said, sighing before he headed to the desk to get started on the paperwork.

As the Hokage seated himself with a groan, the scene shifted again.

The Third Hokage sat regaling a young Uzumaki with tales of exploits from his youth.

"...And so, I was made Hokage." the Hokage finished his story as he smiled down at the blond four year-old who was then escorted out of the office by an ANBU that had his new sensei's hair.

"It looks like I'll be getting my revenge for the paperwork you left me with after all Minato." the Hokage said with an evil smile once the two were gone. "Soon as your kid turns eighteen, I'm naming him Hokage and skipping town."

As the Sandaime plotted, the scene shifted again.

A woman who was presumably the Godaime considering the fact that she had the hat and the desk looked down at the stack of papers that was nearly as tall as she was in front of her before taking a swig from the bottle she held. It was at that moment that an older looking Uzumaki Naruto burst into the room.

"Hiya Ba-chan. Any missions for me today?" the Uzumaki asked cheerfully.

"Well no, but I have a bunch of documents that are "For Hokage's Eyes Only". I'm pretty sure I can trust you with them if you'll be willing to help me file them." the Hokage said gesturing to the giant pile of paperwork.

"Really?! Wow!" the Uzumaki said as he practically dove towards the pile of papers.

"And they call me the Legendary Sucker." the Hokage muttered before she went to show the Uzumaki how to fill out paperwork.

As the Uzumaki eagerly did the Godaime's work for her, the scene shifted yet again. This time though, rather than finding himself and Obito in an older version of the Hokage's office, they were in a completely different room.

A rather old and tired looking Danzo who was presumably the Rokudaime stared at the piles of paper stacked in his temporary office.

"Where the hell did all this paper come from? The village was virtually destroyed less than a week ago." the Sixth Hokage said before moving to inspect one of the piles.

As the Rokudaime poked the paper with his cane, the scene shifted.

"Tenzo, Sai, we need about a hundred more D rank mission report forms stat!" a shinobi said poking his head into a room where a brown haired man that was about his new sensei's age and a black haired teenager a few years older than him were located.

"Roger." the man said before doing a mysterious jutsu that made paper. As soon as the paper had been crafted, the teenager promptly pulled the first few papers off the stack before drawing on them almost faster than the eye could see. As soon as he was done drawing, the teenager did a jutsu that he couldn't identify that caused ink to flow off the papers that he had grabbed and onto the papers in the stack that had just been created before he set the stack aside next to about another hundred stacks of paper.

As the older man started creating another stack of paper, scene shifted back to the temporary Hokage's office.

"Trust bureaucracy to be the first thing to recover." the one-eyed old man grumbled as he one-handedly grabbed a bunch of papers off a random stack and started reading them.

As the Rokudaime read, the world shifted again, and he was back in his bedroom.

"They chain the strongest shinobi in the village to a desk and force him to fill out paperwork?!" he said, stunned after the last of the scenes had played itself out. He had considered becoming Hokage after killing his brother and restoring his clan, but now he knew better. There was no way in hell he was going to let someone sucker him into becoming Hokage much less coming within five people of that position. If the Uzumaki wanted the position, he could have it.

"Yep. Poor Minato-Sensei, he only took the job because he thought he was going to be helping out the village that gave so much to him after he was orphaned." Obito said before he wavered out of existence for a brief moment.

**Edited 12-25-12**


	4. Time's Up

"I seem to be on some sort of a time limit, so I guess I should be hurrying up and getting you to more recent history." he said after he flickered again.

The scene changed. They were in a storage room somewhere where the Fourth Hokage stood holding a baby. As he one-handedly grabbed a number of odd looking kunai, he had the same look on his face that his father had when he got his hand slammed in the file vault door and did his best not to cry. The Fourth Hokage then set the child down and vanished, reappearing elsewhere where he battled a man wearing a mask who had a beautiful red-haired woman chained between some rocks.

The instant he rescued the woman, they vanished together and turned up back in the storage room where the red-haired woman was laid down next to the baby. There was a short conversation between the Yondaime and the red-haired woman that confirmed that the baby was their child. If that wasn't shocking enough, the woman called the baby Naruto.

"Naruto? Naruto as in...?" he said stunned as he stared down at the blond baby who lay next to the red-haired woman who bore a strong resemblance to his teammate. That clanless idiot was the son of the Fourth Hokage?!

"Yep as in Son of the Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato, the chosen of the Toads' prophesy who will bring about a lasting peace since Jiraiya made the right decision, and the reason Kakashi bent the rules so badly that they nearly broke in order to pass your team despite your abysmal teamwork." Obito said.

"Yeah right. The team passed because I am on it and there's no way in hell the Hokage or the Council would let the last of the Uchiha fail." he said

"You're really full of yourself aren't you? The only reason the team passed was because of Naruto who got placed on the team as a bribe to get Kakashi to train you after the guilt trip over my death didn't work. He knew that if he failed the team, no other Jounin would take Naruto as a student." Obito said.

"It's because Naruto's an idiot." he said.

"No, it's because of what's going to happen a few minutes after what I just showed you. Now watch closely." Obito said as the scene shifted to a point in time several minutes after the scene in the storage room. All around was an unearthly red light that cast a hellish glow about the village. Towering above the forest that surrounded the village was the largest and meanest fox he'd ever seen. This terrifying beast could be none other than the Kyuubi that the Yondaime Hokage had killed.

"What do you see skulking around by that building over there?" Obito asked as he pointed to a ruin near the fox's paws.

"Guy in a weird orange mask, why?" he replied. What was so important about some guy in a mask when he was about to watch the Fourth Hokage defeat the Kyuubi?

"That's Tobi. He summoned the fox to destroy Konoha at Madara's behest." Obito said.

After Obito was done pointing Tobi out to him, he was treated to a view of the battle between the Fourth Hokage and the Nine-Tailed Fox that nobody living had seen. Instead of doing some super powerful jutsu as he had imagined the Fourth Hokage doing when he was told that he had killed the fox to save the village, the man had drawn a seal on himself and on his son's abdomen and called upon a Shinigami while the red-haired woman held the creature down with chains. The creature shrunk until it was half the size it originally was. The remaining creature was sealed away inside Naruto after a poignant goodbye from his parents who had been impaled on one of the creature's claws.

"Poor Naruto. Minato-sensei wanted him to be seen as a hero." Obito sighed as the scene quickly flickered through a bunch of major and minor incidents of abuse towards the Uzumaki, Including an assassination attempt that was thwarted by a much younger Hatake Kakashi.

"Now we come to the last few things I'm supposed to show you." Obito said as the scene shifted to a meeting of members of his clan during which they plotted to bring the Hokage down by force and place one of their own in his position, believing that his age made him weak. "These meetings had started long before the Kyuubi attack, but the planning really didn't take off until a couple of years before the massacre. The Third Hokage had tried to find a relatively peaceful solution when he became aware of the fact that our clan was plotting treason, but the Council went behind his back."

As the adults in his clan conspired, the scene shifted once more.

That Man stood before the three Council elders dressed in his ANBU uniform.

"We would not ask this of you if the situation weren't truly dire." Koharu said.

"Konoha is still recovering from the Kyuubi's rampage. Our numbers are much lower than they were before the Third Shinobi War. If a war were to be started we would be destroyed." Homura said.

"Your family's planned actions would spark that war." Danzo said. "It is why we have asked you to eliminate the threat before it goes so far."

"But why all of them?" That Man asked.

"We ask only that you eliminate the guilty." Koharu said. "Those who knew but did nothing are as guilty as those who plotted treason."

"I understand. It shall be done for the sake of Konoha and the safety of the Fire Country." That Man said, sounding saddened at the prospect.

It was while That Man had been wandering about town as if trying to clear his head that he ran into the masked man that Obito had revealed was someone named Tobi who had been working for Madara outside what appeared to be a run down apartment complex. It was during the conversation that had started with a question about what a masked man was doing in this area at this time of night if he wasn't ANBU that Tobi revealed that he was trying to retrieve the Kyuubi to turn it loose on Konoha once more. That Man then persuaded Tobi to take revenge on his clan instead of the village as a whole, and Tobi told That Man how to get the Mangekyo Sharingan and told him he would train him in its use before they parted ways.

"And that's why more than the adults in our clan had died. Tobi - who is completely insane if I might add - was the one who killed your favorite cousins as well as the innocents that were younger than you. Itachi was only supposed to kill all of the members of the clan Genin age and above." Obito said.

The scene changed, and suddenly he was watching his brother kill Shisui at the older teen's behest, and get the Mangekyo as a result. As Shisui died, the scene flashed through the various former possessors of the Mangekyo killing family and friends to obtain it before clan law had forbidden such things to prevent the extinction of the clan.

"Itachi sacrificed a great deal to prevent war, his ideals, his reputation, his favorite amongst his remaining cousins, his clan, and you." Obito said as they watched Shisui's body float downstream. "He was always loyal to Konoha, even when it brought him nothing but pain."

The scene flashed again. He found himself in the midst of the massacre, but it was different from the way That Man had depicted it when he put him under the influence of the Tsukuyomi. Instead of That Man killing the entire clan from the oldest of the elders to the newborn infants in their cribs, That Man killed all of the active shinobi and the conspirators in the failed coup as Tobi went wild and killed the rest. The scene seemed to end as That Man put him under the Tsukuyomi the instant before Tobi passed by their window and glanced in.

"And this is where I must leave you, because I seem to have overrun my allotted time and the next spirit who is due to visit is getting impatient." Obito said the instant before he blinked out of existence.

**Edited 12-25-12**


	5. The Second Spirit

The scene of the Uchiha massacre in which a madman in a mask named Tobi had murdered the children and the civilians in the clan while his brother Itachi slew the active shinobi and the conspirators of the coup that failed because it never actually got off the ground faded away to reveal his bedroom and the fact that it was two fifteen in the morning. Though he couldn't see anyone else at the moment, he could feel that he wasn't alone. As he looked around for the source of that feeling, a very familiar woman stepped out of the shadows.

"Mom?" he said, choking back the tears that threatened to fall as he barely held himself in place. He was a ninja. Ninja didn't run crying to their mothers for comfort like a toddler.

"Oh, Sasuke." his mother sighed. "My poor Sasuke."

That did it. Despite the fact that ninja were proud and upright and didn't cry, he ran to his mother, hugging her for the first time in years.

"It shouldn't have come to this. You shouldn't have had the world placed on your shoulders. Because of our foolish actions, actions that nearly destroyed Konoha, you are alone, and it should not have been that way." Uchiha Mikoto said as she held her son, attempting to comfort him.

He didn't know what to say to that. He just found himself gripping his mother even more tightly and dreading the moment he would be forced to let go.

"It doesn't have to always be this way though. There are people all around you that will be there for you if you just let them, people who will understand your pain because they themselves experience pain of their own." Mikoto said as she started to stroke his hair.

As his mother stroked his hair the way she used to when he was little, the room vanished and he found himself inside a rather crappy looking apartment. Seated at a table with only one place setting was his brash, loud-mouthed, prankster, dead-last teammate. The boy wasn't eating the meager meal before him, but was instead studying something intently as if it might hold all of the answers of the universe. When he came around the table and looked over the blond boy's shoulder, he discovered it to be a formal team photograph. It was a photograph of their team, which was rather weird since they weren't scheduled to take that picture until sometime tomorrow afternoon. In the picture the Haruno girl stood in the middle grinning, he stood as he did for all of the formal photographs he had had taken since the Massacre, Uzumaki stood with his arms folded glaring at him, and Hatake Kakashi stood in the back with one hand on his head, and the other on the idiot's. Kakashi was smiling as well, but - even though the mask mostly hid it - it looked more like he was in pain.

The Uzumaki boy then got up from the table, and with a mischievous smile, he grabbed an old permanent marker from a drawer in the kitchen area of his apartment. He then returned to the table and the photograph, still smiling. He uncapped the permanent marker and started moving it towards the picture. When it was half an inch away from the picture, he stopped. The smile vanished as he set the marker aside and started studying the photograph once more.

The scene vanished, and he found himself on a roof facing a rather run down building that he recognized as the one his brother had met Tobi outside of shortly before the Masacre. Through one of the upper windows, he could just barely make out the dead-last's signature orange and blue jumpsuit. Crouched to his left was his new sensei who was barely bothering to pretend to read the book in his hand. After what seemed like hours, Uzumaki got up from the table and vanished for several minutes. He reappeared wearing ratty pajamas and a totally ridiculous cap that looked like it was trying to eat his head. The blond boy set something on top of his dresser before crawling into bed.

After half an eternity, Hatake Kakashi moved from his crouched position, leapt across the distance that separated the two buildings, landed on the roof of the other building, and vanished through a door. A minute later, he reappeared in the Uzumaki's apartment. After carefully making his way across the floor, he picked up the item the boy had set on the dresser earlier, turned it over, and drew something on the back of it. There was a brief flash after he finished drawing and touched his finger to whatever he had drawn. Once the last of the light vanished, he set the object back on the dresser. He then moved towards the bed where he appeared to be checking on the blanket for some strange reason. Apparently satisfied, he rather gently tucked the sleeping blond in before ruffling his hair and leaving, presumably the way he came.

Soon Sasuke found his mother and himself following his new sensei to a small apartment across town where the Hatake set a newly framed photo of Team 7 down next to one that depicted the Fourth Hokage in the standard Jounin uniform standing behind a trio of children. The positions they were in gave him the chills the instant he saw the photographs side by side. The girl was in the center grinning much like that annoying fangirl he'd been saddled with, the dark haired boy who looked like a slightly younger version of the ghost who introduced himself as Uchiha Obito was to the left, while the light haired boy whom he assumed to be Kakashi himself was to the right. Unlike himself and the Uzumaki however, the Uchiha in this photo was smiling and the other boy seemed unhappy with the world at large rather than just his teammate. The Hokage was in the same position Kakashi was in theirs though.

Kakashi then picked up the older photograph and sat down on his bed, holding it.

"Minato-sensei." Kakashi sighed. "You should be here to see him. He's just as wild as his mother and as idealistic as Obito."

After staring at the photograph for a while, Kakashi set it back in its former place and picked up an older one in a dusty frame of a silver haired man who was proudly carrying a laughing toddler on his shoulders...

The scene vanished, and he found himself in a well ordered home which looked to be a civilian residence judging by the lack of weapons laying about as they had once done in his own home. The pink haired annoyance that had been placed on his team came in, and he found himself following her to a dining room where a red haired man and a white haired woman were seated at a table. A meal was already laid out, and from the looks of things it appeared to be carry-out rather than home cooked.

"Mom! We had our first mission today. It totally sucked. Naruto ruined everything." the pink haired girl said excitedly as she sat down, apparently preparing to launch into a long story on exactly how the Uzumaki had ruined their first mission.

"That's nice dear." the white haired woman said vaguely. The woman who bore a strong resemblance to his teammate was neatly dressed, and impeccably groomed and seemed to fit the home like a glove, but there was something about the woman's eyes that made her look as if she wasn't entirely there.

The red haired man looked over at his female teammate and shook his head slightly. The girl stopped her story mid-sentence.

"Another bad day, huh?" the girl said.

"Yes." the man sighed.

The scene vanished once more, and he found himself standing in the bedroom of another home. Yamanaka Inoichi was tending to a woman on a futon while the blonde annoyance Ino quietly watched from the doorway. Eventually, after the woman appeared to be settled, Inoichi left. The blonde annoyance followed. The Yamanaka man made his way to a bar where a Nara and an Akimichi already occupied a table. As the man moved to be seated, the blonde annoyance briefly presented her headband to the bouncer by the door before finding a table of her own. Oddly enough, he found his attention being drawn towards the three men, rather than the blonde annoyance.

"Again, huh?" the Nara said as soon as the Yamanaka received his drink which appeared to have a significantly higher alcohol content than those in front of his companions.

"Yes." the Yamanaka said sadly.

"Don't worry, if you keep trying you'll get your boy." the Akimichi said sympathetically.

"I don't think I can. This last one nearly killed her, and to be honest I can barely hold myself together each time it happens. Maybe I should just give up and accept the fact that the family I wanted will never happen." the Yamanaka said before taking a gulp of his drink.

As the scene vanished, he caught sight of the blonde annoyance. There was an expression on her face as she received the one drink that Genin were allowed that he'd never seen before, and didn't like.

He soon found himself in an unfamiliar room, and seated on a futon across from him was that stuck up ass Neji. Neji was holding something and staring at it intently. It was yet another photograph. Coming around for a look, he saw that it was of a man that looked just like the head of the Hyuuga clan who was resting on top of the wall that separated the Hyuuga compound from the rest of the village. There was a small child curled up on his chest fast asleep and drooling on his shirt which looked to be a souvenir tee from Iwa of all places. One of his older cousins used to have one just like it which he picked up sometime during the Third Shinobi War. There had been some sort of story behind it about some stupid tradition started in the Second War that had something to do with Rain Country and a paperweight which he'd mostly forgotten.

Seeing as the head of the Hyuuga would never be caught dead in a T-shirt - even if it was some bizarre war trophy - he guessed that the man was Neji's father. He vaguely remembered hearing something about the man being dead, but he wasn't entirely certain.

The scene shifted and he found himself watching as a strange looking boy in green spandex pummelled a training post, determinedly ignoring the group of jeering teenagers that surrounded him. From the way the boy's shoulders were tensed, he was only barely refraining from pummeling the boys instead of the post.

The scene shifted again and he found himself watching a girl with her hair in buns who sat polishing her weapons in a home that was completely empty aside from her.

The scene shifted and he watched as the Hyuuga heiress turned away from her training to look at her father who stood nearby only for him to scowl slightly and turn away. As the man walked off in silence, the girl drew in on herself.

The scene shifted again, and he found himself in a forest. Three shinobi wearing forehead protectors that identified them as being from Kirigakure sat talking in the middle of a makeshift camp. A short distance away, a person that was either an exceedingly feminine boy like a few of his more unfortunate cousins who had been forced to violently refuse certain unwanted advances on multiple occasions or a girl dressed as a boy was feeding a bird.

"Do you have someone precious to you? Someone you wish to protect?" the boy? girl? asked. He? She? was talking to the bird, but it felt as if he? she? was talking to him.

The scene vanished and he found himself looking over the shoulder of a long haired person in a black cloak with red clouds. Clutched in a hand that was rather familiar despite the painted nails was a photograph of him and That Man in a pond splashing each-other. He remembered that day. It had been one of His rare days off, and their mother had taken them on a rather rare picnic. Their father hadn't gone with them because he'd been busy.

"Sasuke." the person he was standing behind sighed.

The person jerked slightly, and an instant later the photograph vanished into a hidden pocket inside the cloak. A blue skinned man who looked to be part shark arrived half a second after the photograph disappeared.

"Ready to go Itachi?" the blue man asked.

The world vanished once more, and instead of finding himself looking at either someone else or his bedroom, he found that he was in a formless gray void, and that his mother who had been by his side was now gone. As he was contemplating his surroundings a figure in a black cloak appeared out of nowhere.

**Edited 12-25-12**


	6. The Final Visitor

Looking into the hood of the black cloak, he saw a face that resembled his own. Despite the fact that he found himself looking into a pair of empty eye sockets, he had the distinct impression that the spirit before him was looking down at him in disapproval. The man said nothing by way of greeting and said nothing as the world swirled into mist and vanished only for him to find himself in a place he'd never seen before when it re-assembled itself.

As he stood watching, he and Naruto battled a masked stranger beneath a dome of ice, he took a blow meant for Naruto, and Naruto went wild avenging him, turning into a feral creature who was only stopped when his opponent's mask cracked.

The world turned to mist and re-assembled itself again.

He stood watching as he, Naruto, and Sakura battled a stranger and a number of snakes. Naruto once more turned feral as he defended him and Sakura from a much stronger opponent, determined to protect them even if it cost him his life.

The world turned to mist and re-assembled again.

He stood watching at the Valley of the End while a slightly older version of himself battled the Uzumaki who had twice proven himself a comrade in arms. As the battle unfolded it was revealed that he was the one who had turned traitor despite the fact that the village had treated the Uzumaki boy most cruelly. The battle ended after his older self punched the Uzumaki through the chest and left him for dead.

The world turned to mist and re-assembled several times as he watched himself do things for power that horrified him.

The world turned to mist and re-assembled several times more, showing flashes of a life of crime that would have shocked his mother and shamed his father as he willingly turned traitor to the village, joined the one who had slaughtered a good half of his clan, came close to killing someone who had willingly followed him, nearly killed one of his teammates, and actively plotted the demise of the other, and personally handed over one of the components that had been needed to create the Jyuubi which was unleashed upon the world by Tobi and Madara.

Then, after Naruto had been greatly weakened by the fight that had claimed the lives of much of their generation, their final fight came. Despite the older Naruto's obviously weakened state, it was a battle for the ages. In the end, his older self outlived Naruto but, not by long. Following Naruto's death was a traitor's death for him after his injured older self was gathered up by the few survivors of the shinobi alliance that had gone up against a group that had been called the Akatsuki which had been led by Tobi who had been acting on Madara's orders.

As he stood there on that desolate field staring at the open and unmarked grave that was meant for him, he heard the words that made it clear that the late Uchiha clan was unlamented and that rather than avenging his family he'd brought shame upon them that would be remembered for ages. His name would be cursed throughout time alongside that of Madara.

"How do I stop this?" he asked as he watched a crying Sakura ram a stake through his older self's heart before he was tipped into his grave, his burial witnessed by many who clearly weren't mourners.

How could he stop what he'd seen was to come? It seemed to be fate. Seeing how things turned out, he could easily see how he had made each of those decisions even though they horrified him now. He could easily make similar decisions when the time came considering how reasonable several of them seemed.

Rather than answering him, the stranger who looked like his older self and could very well have been his older self seemed to be determined to push him into the grave with his deceased counterpart.

"How do I stop this?" he asked again, hoping that this spirit who was there to change his fate could give him some sort of starting point.

It was easy to say "Don't be an asshole" and "Don't kill your friends and fellow villagers" much as Obito who turned out to be a missing aspect of Tobi had done earlier. But, as Tobi showed, it was more easily said than done. One mistake could send him careening down a very slippery slope without him even noticing it until well after it was far too late.

Rather than answering his repeated question, his older self continued to silently push him towards his grave.

"How do I stop this?" he asked again as he teetered at the edge of the grave into which his body had been dumped without even the consideration of a coffin of the meanest sort. A grave in which there was only the corpse of his older self and the dirt and not even a cheap particleboard box to separate the two.

The hooded version of his older self continued refusing to answer as he fell backwards into the grave. Instead of landing on a corpse and having dirt shoveled over him as he expected would happen as one of the bystanders at the burial who'd completely ignored his presence had been equipped with a shovel, he found himself lying on his bed as the light of the early-morning sun streamed into his window.

Looking at the early-morning sun that shone cheerfully in the sky outside his window, he'd been half tempted to dismiss what had happened the night before as a dream that had been brought on as a result of his rather unusual near-death experience. But, there had been too many things in that "dream" that he couldn't have possibly known for him to completely dismiss it out of hand. That, and the future scenarios he'd seen were far too plausible considering some of the half-forgotten stories the clan elders had told him when he was small.

Deciding to take the dream as the warning it was meant to be, he went to his desk and started writing what he'd learned in the dream in a language that could only be decrypted by another Uchiha. There was a great deal of valuable information, as well as a great deal of information that could cause untold chaos and destruction in the wrong hands. If it all turned out to be true rather than a figment of his overactive imagination that was.

After hiding his notes in his usual hiding spot, he went out to meet his team.


	7. The End

Up in the Hokage Tower, Uchiha Itachi the Third growled as he picked up his brush and signed an actual piece of paper which couldn't be hacked like his tablet could. As he shoved the paper aside, his secretary walked into the office.

"Your eleven o'clock is here." the man said.

"Send him in." the Jyudaime Hokage replied.

The paperwork that littered the Hokage's desk vanished quick as a wink the instant the secretary was gone. When Itachi's former student who was a member of the massive Uzumaki clan had arrived, the Tenth Hokage was gazing out the window, looking over a massive metropolis which stretched from the crowded Hokage Monument on which a second row had been started to a point that was several miles out past the original village gates which still stood.

"Hiya sensei!" Uzumaki Sasuke called out cheerfully as he entered the office...

In the nearby Academy, that year's batch prepared to take their graduation exam. While virtually all of the village's old ninja clans were represented at the school that trained the Fire Country's future police and military, half of the class that filled the room to near bursting was either Uzumaki or Uchiha.

In the memorial park down the street from the Academy, a pair of exceedingly elderly men who were near blind and half deaf sat on a bench glaring at the pigeons they were supposed to be feeding since they were elderly, and that's what old people did when they sat on park benches.

"Did you bring the birdseed?" one of the old men whose dark eyes were almost completely clouded by age finally asked.

"No, I thought that you were bringing it." an old man with sky blue eyes whose bald head was protected from the sun by a distinctive triangular red and white hat replied.

"Idiot."

"Jerk."

"Moron."

"Bastard."


End file.
